|
During the first half of 2002, the stock
market plunge wiped out $3.7 trillion of wealth, including
the retirement savings of millions of citizens. |
Most
Americans believe the U.S. “is headed in the wrong direction,”
recent surveys show. It’s not hard to see why. On issue after
issue, government policy has been hijacked by the super-rich,
who are helping themselves while doing grave damage to our
country.
A
Failing Economy
The economic policies of the GOP-dominated Congress and Bush
administration are an unmitigated disaster. In January 2001,
there were 18.2 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. There are
only 16.7 million such jobs today — an average loss of 83,000
manufacturing jobs a month, federal figures show.
Long-term unemployment is the worst it’s been in a decade.
Nearly 2 million U.S. workers have been unemployed more than 26
weeks and, by October 1, some 1.5 million people had exhausted
their unemployment benefits. Many state unemployment trust funds
are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Wage
growth has slowed to its lowest levels in eight years, and food
banks across the country are struggling to meet a rising flood
of requests for assistance.
$3.7
trillion in wealth went up in smoke between January and July, as
investors fled the market, frightened by a crime wave of
accounting fraud and insider trading involving companies like
Enron, Halliburton, Worldcom/MCI, Johnson & Johnson, Citigroup,
J.P. Morgan Chase, Tyco, AOL, Global Crossing, Xerox, Qwest and
Adelphia.
Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit has ballooned to more than
$400 billion and is expanding an alarming 16 percent a year. The
deficit hit a record-high $37.6 billion in May, decimating
American jobs as imports outstripped exports and driving up
foreign debt to the tune of $1 billion a day.
A
Surge In Deficits
Corporate America’s allies have also made a mess of
government finances in remarkably
short order. “Virtually the entire $5.6 trillion, 10-year
surplus projected when Bush came to office has disappeared,”
reports political analyst David Broder, noting that nearly half
the surplus was blown on tax cuts for the richest one percent of
the U.S. population. Current projections for 2003, alone, show a
$194 billion deficit, $85 billion (or 44 percent) more than the
administration predicted.
Rather than face the problem, Congressional conservatives and
administration officials are cooking the books with a
recklessness that would make an Enron executive blush. They
insist they will balance the budget by 2005, while every major
government study projects deficits for the next 10 years. Their
promised return to fiscal sanity assumes a sharp rise in
corporate profits and ignores (among other things) some $400
billion revenue lost to tax cuts, $160 billion spending for the
new Medicare prescription drug plan, and billions more blown on
expiring tax cuts that Corporate America wants to make
permanent.
Congressional conservatives shrugged off repeated warnings about
the risks of massive tax cuts in an uncertain economic climate.
Even now they refuse to listen, while a stalled economy is
wrecking havoc with government finances.
Risking Our Retirement
In a recent survey, 44 percent of the people said they will
be forced to retire later in life than they had planned. Why?
Because crashing stock prices and the wave of corporate scandals
have decimated their retirement savings.
Yet
even in the wake of the Enron debacle, Corporate America’s
allies insisted on phony pension protection “reforms” that do
not require companies to provide workers with better information
on the true state of corporate finances or to offer employees a
greater mix of company and non-company stock.
Nor
did Congress even consider requiring companies to offer “defined
benefit” plans (which provide a guaranteed benefit) instead of
stock-based 401(k)’s (which shift the risks to employees and
pump billions into the corporate treasuries). Only 30 years ago,
71 percent of all employees with pensions were covered by
defined benefit plans. Today, the figure is only 29 percent.
On
the other hand, Congress will spend an estimated $2 trillion of
the Social Security surplus during the next decade to cover
budget shortfalls caused by the recent tax-cutting binge.
Mugging older folk is ugly business. It’s time to elect people
who will stand up and say “No!”
Maiming America’s Workers
Since January 2001, Corporate America has unleashed an
unprecedented assault on the rights of U.S. workers.
Congressional conservatives repealed OSHA’s ergonomics standard
– regulations proposed by the first Bush administration to
remedy the nation’s leading cause of on-the-job injuries,
affecting between 600,000 and 1 million people a year. Their
allies blocked repeated efforts to raise the minimum wage (now
worth only 30 percent of its 1968 value) by a mere $1.50 over
three years.
Corporate America cheered as the Bush administration
unilaterally dismantled the National Partnership Councils,
created under President Nixon to promote voluntary cooperation
between federal employee unions and the government. Rules
punishing contractors who violate federal labor, environmental
or consumer protection laws? Repealed. Laws requiring
corporations to report consultants and attorneys hired to bust
unions? Repealed.
The
Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau was scrapped: a bureau that
has focused on issues vital to working women for 82 years,
through 11 Democratic and 13 Republican administrations.
Yet
we have new federal rules that require employers to notify
workers of their right to refuse to join unions and to withhold
a portion of their dues, with no requirement that they also
advise employees of their legal rights to organize or join
unions. Corporate America’s allies are also pushing hard for
federal laws to cripple the ability of unions to engage in
political activities.
Unless union members respond with a massive voter turnout this
fall, history may record these attacks as Corporate
America’s mere warmup for the main event.
|